


Flightless

by apollonious



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Happy Ending?, Post-Canon, allusions to Stoick's death, clifftop discussions, saturday is dragon day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:06:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24696496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apollonious/pseuds/apollonious
Summary: The day after the dragons leave, Valka has a conversation with her son.
Relationships: Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III & Valka
Comments: 11
Kudos: 25





	Flightless

Dinner is over, and the bowls and mugs and spoons have been laid out to dry in the light of the not-quite-setting sun. It won’t set properly for hours yet—in a few weeks, Valka knows, there will be several days where it doesn’t set at all.

And now her son has vanished.

She could have sworn he was still at his spot at the head of the washing-up line just a few moments ago, when she last looked. Gobber propelled him there the second he was finished eating so that he could take advantage of the opportunity to serve his people, to exchange a few words with each and every one of the villagers whose lives have been turned upside down over the last few days. Whose lives _Hiccup_ has turned upside down.

At once, Valka chides herself—that’s not fair, not really, not with everything he’s faced, and the fact that his own life has been disrupted just as much as everyone else’s. Even if she has found herself looking reflexively to the sky all day, looking for the wings that she’s grown so used to and finding instead only empty blue.

She supposes she should have seen this coming, even despite how willing—happy, even—Hiccup was to perform the task of taking people’s dishes and scraping out the scraps into the village’s compost. Though maybe the happiness itself should have been a warning if he was planning to disappear as soon as he could.

Valka can see Astrid milling about on the other side of the makeshift town square, almost directly across from where Valka stands in what will be the doorway to the Mead Hall once they’ve finished building it. So at least _that’s_ not where Hiccup’s gone off to. She does like Astrid—already they get along better than she ever did with her own mother-in-law—and she can hardly blame him for spending so much time with her since… since yesterday, but it’s good that he seems to be actually taking some time to process it on his own.

All the same, Valka feels an odd tugging sensation in her chest, a pulling to go find him.

Because she hasn’t been alone in twenty years, not really, and she is now, even among the villagers of what is now New Berk. 

She hates it.

Astrid spots her as she’s striding across the town square and walks up, and Valka pauses.

“Have you seen Hiccup?” Astrid asks, and Valka can understand the concern in her face, because it’s the same concern she herself is trying to suppress. 

Valka shakes her head. “I was just thinking of going to find him.” Astrid opens her mouth, no doubt to suggest that she come along, and Valka goes on, “I need to speak with him.” While she doesn’t actually use the word _alone,_ her tone makes it clear that that is what she means.

Astrid nods, swallowing. “Alright. I ought to help my mother finish getting unpacked.”

“I’ll make sure he gets back safely.”

Astrid nods again, and then Valka is off, heading out of town at an easy pace. 

It doesn’t appear as though Hiccup was trying to obscure the signs of his passage at all on his way out of town, and so it’s easy enough to track him through the woods surrounding New Berk. At least, she hopes she’s following Hiccup, and not someone _else_ who’s taken off for a bit of solitary brooding. The trail ends at the base of a cliff, and glancing up, Valka can see no sign of Hiccup. 

He must have had more of a head start than she thought.

For a second, Valka reflexively reaches for her staff, thinking to call Cloudjumper and ask for a lift, before she remembers. She's left the staff back in the hut that will be her new home, and as for Cloudjumper himself, he is infinitely too far away to hear the staff even if she had it with her. She begins to climb, her heart aching. The ascent is manageable enough, with plenty of hand- and footholds. She’s a little surprised that Hiccup has gone to the trouble, though, especially with his leg. That surprise fades when she reaches the top and sees the view.

The village is out of sight, which Valka realizes with a pang may be as much of a draw for Hiccup as it is for her. From this spot, all she can see is the wilderness of the island, its forests and lakes, and the cliffs rising far above even this one. And she can see Hiccup, sitting across from her with his legs dangling off the edge of the cliff.

She walks toward him, noticing as she does that there’s a small object sitting on the ground next to him. It’s a jar of mead, she realizes as she gets closer, and if all the mead missing from the top of the jar is currently inside her son, they might have a problem. 

But his gaze is clear enough when he looks up and around at her, and his hand is steady as he pats the ground next to him with a rueful smile. Valka sits, letting her legs dangle beside his. 

“Did you come up here to find me?” Hiccup asks. “Or did you want to get away from the epic battle of Snotlout against Eret for your favor?”

Valka snorts. “I think that battle is rather one-sided.” 

“And yet there’s a clear victor, and I don’t think it’s the one who’s doing the fighting.”

Valka rolls her eyes, blushing a little despite herself as she and Hiccup trade grins. They look out together over the island.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Hiccup says after a long, quiet minute that Valka allows to remain empty, waiting for him to speak first, and she nods. “I’m glad we settled here, even if it couldn’t be—”

He cuts off, and Valka’s not quite sure if he means home—Berk—or the Hidden World. “What’s it like?” she asks, her voice eager. The question’s been burning in her mind since he got back, especially now that Cloudjumper has left. She needs to know, if only to be sure that her companion hasn’t left her to go somewhere dank and dark and awful. And of course, she can’t help but be curious about the ancestral home of the dragons. “The Hidden World. Tell me everything.”

Hiccup’s eyes go distant, like he’s looking at something far away. “It’s incredible,” he says softly, and Valka feels a sigh of relief whoosh out of her. “That mariners’ myth, about a waterfall at the edge of the world, it’s not all wrong, but the waterfall leads down into this series of caves. I think the opening must be volcanic, you can see lava at the bottom as you’re flying in, and it’s just impossibly vast, full of these stalagmites taller than the Mead Hall will be when it’s finished.” Valka’s eyes slide shut as she imagines it. “And then you keep going, and it opens up even farther into this impossibly huge chamber full of columns covered in moss or lichen or something, I don’t know what, I didn’t get close enough—maybe crystals—but it _glows._ And the _dragons,_ Mom.”

Valka’s eyes open. “What about them?”

“They glow too. New patterns show up in their scales, just all different colors, and it’s so beautiful.” He pauses to take a sip of mead. “Or at least Stormfly’s. I couldn’t really see Toothless when we were going through there on the way out; he had me in his claws.”

“Why were you in his claws?”

Hiccup sighs. “There was this Rumblehorn that saw me and Astrid as we were watching Toothless and the Light Fury. I’d just about made up my mind to come back, and then he spotted us and got all territorial and aggressive.”

Valka chuckles. “They’ll do that.”

Hiccup laughs, a little bitterly. “Don’t I know it. I—gods, I forgot that not all dragons know me, and I tried to reach out and calm it down. It might’ve trampled me if Astrid hadn’t gotten me to run. Toothless had to come save our hides. That’s why he came back. And that’s why the Light Fury followed him.”

Valka can hear the guilt in his voice and wants to soothe it, but he’s still talking. 

“There were just… _thousands_ of dragons down there, Mom. More than I’ve ever seen in one place before. And there’s this cavern, the biggest of them all, with this giant crystal glowing in the middle. And that’s where Toothless was holding court. It’s just so perfect for them. For him. He belongs there, and we wouldn’t have.”

This feels especially cruel, almost more so than the separation itself, considering that they are sitting in the middle of a place that had such _potential_ to be perfect for all of them, a place for both humans and dragons to belong, to live together in peace as Hiccup had wanted since he first met Toothless.

“Drago’s Bewilderbeast is down there.”

“Really?” Valka exclaims, and Hiccup nods. “Oh good, I’m glad.”

“I am too,” Hiccup says, and they share a sad smile at the memory of Valka’s Bewilderbeast, and of Stoick. Once again Valka is struck by her son’s capacity for forgiveness. “Still has the shackle on its tusk and everything. It was in the crowd that greeted Toothless. I don’t know how it would have gotten down there, since you need to fly to get in the way we did and its wings didn’t look like they were big enough to hold it aloft. Maybe there’s another entrance or something, but…” He shrugs, and Valka gets it. It’s not as though they’re going to have a chance to figure it out.

Valka puts a hand on Hiccup’s shoulder, and he turns to look at her. She can feel a longing echoing in her soul like the toll of a bell, for the Hidden World, for her dragon, for flight, for _freedom,_ and looking in his eyes, she sees that he understands, that he can feel the same longing pulling him somewhere deep and bright and definitively _not here._

“Do you still think he’d be proud?” Hiccup asks, his voice shaking.

“Your father?”

He nods.

There are many words Valka wishes she could have with her dead husband, but chief among them is, _How could you have ever let him doubt you were proud of him?_ Instead she asks her son, “Why wouldn’t he be?”

“Because I failed,” he says, looking back down across the island. “Didn’t I? It’s because of me that we lost the dragons, and we had to move the entire village. It’s my fault that Toothless—“

His voice cracks and breaks, and with no more warning than that, his shoulders spasm with the force of the sob that rips its way out of him. He doesn’t try to hold back the tears for more than a second, burying his face in his hands until Valka pulls him against her. 

With his face buried in her neck and his long, thin arms around her waist, Valka thinks this must have been what it was like to comfort him when he cried as a boy. She wasn’t there, of course, when he was old enough to cry over anything more complicated than hunger or a messy diaper, and she feels a pang of that familiar guilt that she doesn’t think she’s ever going to forgive herself for. She doesn’t even know what kind of child he was, not really; she doesn’t know if he cried a lot, or if there was someone to soothe him when he did. But she knows she loves the man he’s grown into, and that will have to do for now. All she can do is hold her son, her too-young chief, in a way that she should have held him a hundred times but hasn’t before today. 

She’s crying too, for her son, for her dragon, for herself, and she makes no effort to hold back the tears as they leak from the corners of her eyes. 

Pulling Hiccup even closer, Valka makes comforting shushing noises as she strokes his hair. It seems that someone at least did that when he was little, because after a little while he cries himself out and grows quiet. She keeps her arms around him until he gives her one last squeeze and pulls away, wiping his eyes on the back of his hand and sniffling.

“Sorry,” he says, his voice still thick.

“You don’t need to apologize,” Valka says, her hand on his shoulder. He turns to look at her, eyes red and puffy, and seems to register for the first time that she’s been crying too. He raises a shaking hand to her face and wipes the tears away from one cheek with his thumb. She wants to reassure him, to tell him that he did the right thing, that it’s fine, but the words stick in her throat. She can’t say that, not when it lost her Cloudjumper. She’s sure he can see the struggle of that on her face, and equally sure he feels the same. He blames himself, as he always does.

“It’s not your fault,” she manages. “You cannot blame yourself for the actions of evil men. You did the best you could, and you and Toothless both had to make a difficult choice.”

“Greedy humans always find a way,” he says, quoting her, and she can only look at him, her heart in her throat. “Are you proud of me?”

“Always.”

With another great sniffle, he looks back out over the island, toward the setting sun. “I think I might have made the wrong choice.”

“Well, it’s not as though there’s much we can do about it now,” Valka says, willing forced lightness into her tone. It has the desired effect, producing a wet, hoarse laugh from Hiccup. “And you’re more than capable of standing on your own as chief, with or without your dragon. Letting him go… it’s painful, but you were right, as was he. He’s free this way, and he’s safe.”

Hiccup looks at her skeptically. “Are you telling me you don’t miss Cloudjumper?”

“Of course I miss Cloudjumper,” Valka says. “It’s like…” She can’t make herself finish saying _like losing you all over again,_ but she sees from the sadness in his eyes that he gets it. “It’s like a part of me is missing.” She reaches up and cups his face in one hand, and he leans into it. 

Now she is the one to look away, down and across the land before them. “I always thought,” she says, “that the only way dragons and humans could live in peace was if they lived separately. And it seems I was right. But I think I might’ve gotten caught on the wrong side of the line when the separation happened.”

When she looks back to Hiccup, his eyes are at once heartbroken and completely understanding. “I think I might have too,” he whispers, as though he can hardly bring himself to admit it. 

“Soul of a dragon,” Valka whispers, and Hiccup nods, smiling sadly before pulling her into a warm, tight embrace. She has that same soul, she knows—how could she have seen it in him if she didn’t? He understands her more than anyone she’s ever known, just as she understands the part of him that wants nothing more than to be flying right now, far from here and high in the darkening sky. 

But he also has the heart of a chief, and it is that part of him that makes him pull away and look her in the eye, his gaze steady despite the tears that linger on his face. “I think I’m always going to miss him,” he says. “But you’re right. He deserves his freedom. I…” He looks toward the distant dark blue line of the sea. “I almost died yesterday. I would have if the Light Fury hadn’t caught me.” Valka’s breath catches in her throat, and he glances back toward her. “And it would’ve been worth it, to keep him safe. And now, living without him… I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I know I have to try.”

The old adage slips across Valka’s mind: _A downed dragon is a dead dragon._ But Hiccup has already proved that wrong once, and Valka knows she will do whatever she can to help him do it again. She will not wither away simply because she cannot fly anymore. And she will make sure he doesn’t either. They've lost so much, but all they can do now is try to live with it. “I’m with you,” she says. “New Berk is with you. And Astrid is with you.”

He nods. “I know. Thanks, Mom.” 

They sit there, on the edge of the cliff, for a long while, until the light pouring over the island turns the color of molten gold, seemingly almost thick enough to touch against the blue of the sky. Neither one speaks. The air cools, though it’s never exactly warm here, not even in the middle of summer, and Valka finds herself leaning into the warmth of Hiccup’s side. He wraps his arm around her shoulder. 

Each of them has a few sips of mead, passing the jar back and forth until Hiccup turns, stopping it back up and tucking it into a satchel that’s been lying on the ground behind him. “We’d better get back, it’s getting late.”

Valka stands, offering a hand to help pull him to his feet.

“I don’t know where I’m sleeping tonight,” Hiccup says, as though the thought has only just now occurred to him. “I suppose I’ve still got my tent.”

“Come stay in my hut,” Valka says. 

“You’ve got a hut already?” Hiccup asks incredulously.

She nods. “It went up this morning. And of course the men made sure to add a second bedroom for my son.”

Hiccup chuckles. “That’s one thing you can say for Berkians—well, New Berkians now. We’re quick builders. Hopefully I won’t need it for too long. I told Astrid I’d build her a house.”

“It’s yours as long as you want it,” Valka says. Turning away from the cliff edge where they’ve been sitting, she can see fires starting to be lit in the village. “Shall we? We’d better hurry if we don’t want to make that climb in the dark.”

Pain flashes across Hiccup’s face—it’s been so long since he had to worry about losing his way at night. But he nods. 

“Yeah. Let’s go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it. If you'd like, please do leave a comment; they're always greatly appreciated.


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